Thursday, November 1, 2012

November 1, 2012 10:00 AM—Book Review: The Post-American World

I just finished another good book that I felt I needed to
share. The book is called The Post-American World by Fareed
Zakaria. Zakaria was born and raised in
India but then went on to do his post-secondary education in the U.S. He says that this book is not about the
decline of America, but more about the rise of the rest. Although that may be true to one extent or
another, I would have to disagree.
Considering there are more chapters in this book about America than
there are of any other country, it is more about America than anything
else. Nonetheless it was a really good
book.

In this book Zakaria talks a lot about the BRIC (Brazil,
Russia, India, and China) countries. He focuses
in particular on India and China and how fast and in what ways they are
developing. These two countries are very
different from each other and they are developing in very different ways, but
both are also developing very quickly.
He talks a lot about their history and what has lead them to the
positions that they hold in the world today.

The other main focus of this book is the United States and
its superpower status. He discusses some
U.S. history so we can try and understand how America got to where it is
today. He also compares the America of
today with America in different periods throughout history. He even goes as far as to compare the U.S.
today to the British Empire 150 years ago.
He also talks about many problems that we see in the U.S. today
including the economy, politics and terrorism.
The main focus is on how America is the strongest country in the World
right now, but how that might not always be the case considering the rise of
some other important players (ex. China and India).

A few weeks ago I was sitting in the staff room watching
TV. Al Jazeera was on and I was trying
to get as much news as possible before someone came and changed the channel to something really mindless. And as any
news station in the world, there was mention of the upcoming U.S. election. Then President Obama came on and everyone in
the room got quite. They all want to
listen to Obama. And as soon as Obama
was no longer on they went back to what they were doing. At this point, one of the other teachers
looked at me and said “Our President!” I
said “Our President?” He responded by saying “Yes, the U.S.
controls everything in the world so Obama is our president too.” This conversation really made me think about
the status of the U.S. as the world’s biggest superpower. This teacher was referring to Obama as his president, but not in a bitter,
angry way. In fact, most Ugandans are
proud that Obama is the U.S. president.
But for a Ugandan to acknowledge that the U.S. controls a lot of the
world really struck me.

Anyway, this book discusses the decline that America will
probably see in the coming years and the rise of the rest of the world. It talks about history, economics, and politics
as well as an in depth analysis about what the U.S. can do to try to cope with
this changing world. Overall, I really
enjoyed this one and I found it to be very intriguing. If you are at all interested in Economics and
Politics, or the rise of China and India, I’d suggest reading this book.